Consequence of Five Year Plan: Major fire burns unnoticed for three hours
The smog covering large regions of Northern and Easter China has been a topic in media around the world. It reach an almost unimaginable dimenion in some areas. In Zhejiang province, a major fire in an industrial area burned unnoticed for three hours before neighbors could differentiate the thick smoke billowing from the furniture factory from the "normal" smog and notified fire fighters. As the fire had a large "head start", it took ten hours to control the blaze. There were no reports of casualties.
In some regards, this extreme case is a consequence of the Fve Year Plan.
Pollution is a hard-to-pinpoint topic. In many cases, there is no obvious casual chain between a concrete emittor and a concrete victim. In the case of carbon dioxide, for example, there is a huge number of emittors, and the effects are global - it does not matter where the green house gas is produced. Furthermore, the effects of global warming for any individual are hard to measure. In the case of waste water from a paper mill, on the other hand, the causal chain is clear: a paper mill discharges untreated waste water into a river, and the downstream population suffers. China has mechanisms for dealing with both types of pollution - but they don't work perfectly.
The aforementioned paper mill was supposed to be built in the Eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. Soon, popular resistance formed, as citizens were concerned that the mill would not adhere to the (very strict) Chinese environmental regulations (as the enforcement of those regulations is often lax). The situation escalated. At first, there were popular outpourings on the internet; then, there were demonstrations. The dialogue between the citizens, the mill operator, and the local government broke down. In the end, the plans for the mill were scrapped. A victory for the local population.
That such local influence does not always work can be seen plainly when one consideres the situation of Ningbo. Ningbo is one of the wealthiest cities in China, with a reputation for excellent education and trade relations all over the work. In this open city, it is hardly surprising that citizens can economically afford to challenge the local government and a major potential employer, not to speak of the population's general enlightenment. In many rural areas and inland regions, however, the motto "industry = progress" still holds sway, so popular protests against environmental problems are not as often successful as in the highly developed coastal regions.
In cases in which the direct chain from emittor to victim is not tangible, the Chinese government implements economic policy and legislative measures - if it deems such action to be necessary. The main instrument for this is the Five Year Plan, which, for example, sets the targets for economic policy, and from which most State Owned Enterprises (SOE's) take derive their concrete measures for business policy. On the topic of carbon dioxide, for example, the CO2 reduction was included in the Twelfth Five Year Plan, which took effect in 2011. Almost overnight, we saw a massive adaptation of priorities by Chinese industrial companies, as "CO2 Reduction Targets" were added to tens of thousands of company presentations. But it was not all lip service: product development, purchasing decisions and M&A strategies are now widely influenced by CO2 reduction targets.
And here exactly lies the core of the smog problem. The thirtienth Five Year Plan will take effect in 2016. Until then, the twelfth Plan will be in effect, and the problem of local air pollution is not a top priority in it. Corrective action by the government outside of the plan have very limited effect. For example, an urgent appeal by the Chinese government to reduce particulate emissions was mostly ignored by Chinese steel makers. The Chinese steel sector, different from e.g. the energy sector, is fragmented and influenced heavily by local interests. Now, the government is working to restructure this industry. A lengthy process.
And yet, in spite of all these problems, the above example of the steel producers shows that the government is now also tackling secondary air polluters. For the primary polluters - energy companies, automobiles etc. - the direction has been set already. We can only hope that the current episode of air pollution expedites the process of cleaning up the industry. At the very least, we now know that "reduction of local air pollution" is a hot candidate for high-priority inclusion in the Five Year Plan. In 2016.
Even in China, the wheels of politics are turning slowly.
Sources: Xinhua, WSJ, Berners Consulting
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